toughs I have ever seen’.21
Emmet Dalton would later confirm that he himself was one of the men who escorted Craig on this secret trip to see Dev. However, Dalton’s military style moustache and officer-style bearing hardly qualified him as a villainous ‘tough’. In an account given to historian Calton Younger, Dalton said he sat in the car beside Craig and advised him to pass himself off as his secretary if they were stopped by Crown forces. In the event of trouble, Craig would be ‘first to go’. Many years later, Dalton expressed admiration for Craig’s courage.22
Another member of the escort was a young republican, Sean Harling, who worked for Dáil Éireann. He usually helped organize the logistics and security arrangements when President Éamon de Valera received VIP visitors or journalists from abroad. In testimony to the Bureau of Military History, Harling does not mention Dalton in connection with the Craig trip, but identified Joe Hyland as the driver of the car.23 A taxi-driver, Hyland, was Michael Collins’s ‘wheelman’, and well-used to clandestine operations.
According to the account given by Craig’s biographer, St. John Ervine, the car carrying the Unionist leader stopped en route at a canal bridge, and Craig was asked to alight. A barge was passing under the bridge, and Craig inquired, no doubt facetiously, if the journey was to continue by water. In fact they were changing to another car on the other side of the bridge – probably as a security precaution. St. John Ervine states that Craig thought he was being driven to County Wicklow, and suggests he was taken by a roundabout route so that he would not know his actual location. However, Harling in his Witness Statement, states that Craig asked him, while they were passing through the north Dublin suburb of Clontarf, would it be indiscreet of him to inquire where he was now. ‘So I said, “No Sir, you are in Clontarf.” He said, “Oh, this is where King Brian [Boru] fought the Danes.”’
Craig was brought to a house called Belvidere, on the Howth Road, Clontarf, occupied by a solicitor, Tom Green. This was the ‘safe house’ where de Valera was waiting to receive his visitor. It was a large, luxurious, detached residence set in spacious gardens. Craig’s biographer says the Unionist leader saw a number of men with picks and shovels ‘pretending’ to repair the road outside the house, but who were clearly ‘guarding’ de Valera. St. John Ervine describes how the ‘three toughs’, followed by Craig, entered the house and met de Valera standing on the threshold of the sitting room. This may have been Dalton’s first meeting with Dev, whom Dalton would later come to despise, considering him the prime cause of Ireland’s Civil War.
While a meeting between the leaders of two opposing traditions on the island of Ireland was in itself a positive development, there was little immediate result from the encounter between Craig and de Valera. According to Craig’s later account to his wife, de Valera began to talk, reaching the eleventh-century era of Brian Boru after ‘a half hour’, and after another half hour, the era of ‘some king a century or two later’. ‘By this time I was getting tired, for de Valera hadn’t begun to reach the point at issue. Fortunately, a fine Kerry Blue entered the room and enabled me to change the conversation…’24 M.J. MacManus, who wrote a sympathetic biography of de Valera, had a different version of events, saying that de Valera had to do almost all the talking because Craig said so little: ‘De Valera welcomed the opportunity for an exchange of views, but found that he had to do most of the talking. The dour Northerner was a man of few words. He lit his pipe and smoked and listened. De Valera gave him some geography, a certain amount of economics, and quite a lot of history. Sir James smoked and smoked, a perfect picture of the strong, silent man…’25
The two men agreed on a brief statement to the press to record the fact that they had met. Craig wrote the statement on a piece of paper torn from a copy of the Freeman’s Journal newspaper and de Valera wrote the agreed text on another piece of paper. Emmet Dalton would describe later how Craig, after the meeting, told him that he found de Valera ‘impossible’.26 Craig was driven back to the home of Sir James O’Connor, where O’Connor and Cope were waiting anxiously for his return. Craig and Cope travelled on to the Secretary’s Lodge in the Phoenix Park, where Lady Craigavon was waiting even more anxiously for her husband to come back. Years later, after her husband’s death, she still retained the scrap of paper from the Freeman’s Journal on which Craig had written the statement.
Dalton’s companion on this occasion, Sean Harling, went on to win his own place in the history of Irish intrigue. Harling, who was interned during the Civil War, apparently went on to work as an undercover intelligence agent for the Free State police force, the Garda Síochána. He claimed that on returning to his Dublin home at Dartry Road one evening in January 1928, he was fired on by two men, and that he returned fire, mortally wounding one of his assailants. The dead man was Timothy Coughlan, an IRA man believed to have been part of the three-man gang who had assassinated Government Minister Kevin O’Higgins the previous year. It was found that Coughlan had been shot in the back of the head and still had a cigarette in his mouth. A tribunal of inquiry found that Harling had acted in self-defence.
Meeting Michael Collins, and Attempted Rescue of Sean MacEoin
Some time after he had joined the IRA Emmet Dalton met the man who was to have a profound effect on his life – Michael Collins. Dalton was introduced to Collins at Devlin’s public house, one of Collins’s regular haunts. Dalton was very impressed by the man known affectionately as the ‘Big Fellow’. Apparently Collins was introduced to Dalton only by his nickname – the name ‘Michael Collins’ was not used at all during this first encounter. There were also code names for the various hostelries that Collins frequented. So far as Dalton could recall, Vaughan’s Hotel was ‘joint number one’, Devlin’s was ‘joint number two’ and nearby Kirwan’s pub was ‘joint number three’. It appears that the two men did not have much to talk about during that first meeting but Collins said they would meet again.27
The next meeting with Collins resulted in Dalton taking a lead role in one of the most hazardous episodes of his career – the attempt to rescue senior IRA commander Sean MacEoin from Mountjoy Prison. It was an operation that also involved Emmet’s brother Charlie. Even though Charlie was a member of Collins’s intelligence apparatus, and had taken part in the Bloody Sunday operation, he only knew Collins to see. His first face-to-face meeting with Collins did not happen until April 1921, when the operation to ‘spring’ MacEoin from prison was being organized.
Collins was particularly anxious to rescue MacEoin. Known as ‘The Blacksmith of Ballinalee’, MacEoin was one of the more notable guerrilla fighters during the War of Independence. He operated in County Longford and was facing trial by military court and an almost certain death sentence. Ironically, he was an IRA leader who acted with particular chivalry towards enemy prisoners. Emmet Dalton described MacEoin as having ‘brought a glimmer of decency into a dark and sordid era’.28
To ‘spring’ MacEoin from Mountjoy Prison, Collins came up with the idea of hi-jacking a British Army armoured car and have one of their people impersonate a British officer in the prison. MacEoin would then be taken away to safety. Collins devised the plan after being told that the crew of an armoured car regularly breached security regulations by emerging from the vehicle at a particular location and leaving the door open. This made the car’s seizure a real possibility. But who could impersonate a British officer?
Traynor suggested Emmet Dalton to Collins, who asked to meet him. As mentioned, the two had previously been introduced at Devlin’s pub. When the war hero met the Big Fellow once again, Collins was immediately struck by the fact that Dalton was ‘made for the job’.29 According to Traynor, Dalton spoke with the required ‘affected accent’ of the British officer, was very neat and debonair and wore a small, fair moustache, of the type favoured by the officer class. Collins explained that Dalton would dress up as a British officer and bluff his way into Mountjoy in a hi-jacked armoured car to rescue MacEoin. Privately, Dalton thought the plan was ‘insane’, according to his later account, but such was Collins’s enthusiasm that he decided to go along with the proposal.30 When Dalton agreed to take part, Collins shook his hand warmly, and assured him he would have the backing of the entire Volunteer organization. Collins went on to have regular meetings with Dalton as part of the planning process for the rescue.
A bond